Dragon's Dogma II
Capcom Development Division 1 · RPG, ARPG, Action
Overview
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a single player, narrative driven action-RPG that challenges the players to choose their own experience – from the appearance of their Arisen, their vocation, their party, how to approach different situations and more - in a truly immersive fantasy world.
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Set forth on your grand adventure, Arisen!
Dragon’s Dogma is a single player, narrative driven action-RPG series that challenges the players to choose their own experience – from the appearance of their Arisen, their vocation, their party, how to approach different situations and more. Now, in this long-awaited sequel, the deep, explorable fantasy world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 awaits.
On your journey, you’ll be joined by Pawns, mysterious otherworldly beings, in an adventure so unique you will feel as if accompanied by other players while on your own adventure.
All of these elements are elevated further through physics technology, artificial intelligence (AI) and the latest in graphics, to create a truly immersive fantasy world in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
Action that challenges your creativity
Wield swords, bows, and chant magick.
The vocations in Dragon's Dogma 2 give you the ability to approach combat the way you want.
Company in your single-player experience
Players can customize their own main Pawn, who will always accompany your Arisen,
And enter a covenant with up to 2 additional Pawns from other players through the network.
Facing the monsters in this world
Beyond the town borders, you will encounter diverse monsters that inhabit the lands.
You will need to decide between engaging in battles or finding alternatives;
So be aware of your party’s setup, the terrain around you, and the monsters you face.
Inhabitants of this world
Travelers, merchants, soldiers and other folk go about their daily lives.
Preoccupied by their own objectives and motives, they all exhibit different emotions.
At times, they may lead you to a quest by approaching you and asking for a favor.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,997 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players defend Dragon's Dogma 2 for what happens in a fight or on the road, and criticize much of what surrounds that. The praise centres on combat: grabbing and climbing giant monsters, throwing goblins off cliffs, and vocations that each play differently. Walking into the unknown with a party of pawns gives many players a feeling of adventure they say no other open-world RPG offers. Against that, the story is often called thin and rushed, the same few enemy types repeat across the map, quests are vague and easy to fail, and the PC version spent two years known for poor performance in cities. Fans of the first game are divided on whether this is a worthy sequel.
The tone changed sharply in 2026. Reviews written between January 2025 and early June 2026 were 65% positive; after the expansion was announced in June 2026 that rose to 79%, and reviews written from the end of August 2026 onward were 84% positive (1,225 of 1,458). Players credit a September 2026 update with removing Denuvo, fixing most of the city frame drops, adding six skill slots, multiple saves and an eternal ferrystone, and, by some accounts, dropping most microtransactions. Reviewers describe the Dark Arisen expansion that followed as adding a new region, a hard mode and an endgame loot loop. The Recommended verdict is a call on the game as it stands after those changes: the slice as a whole is less warm, and Steam's lifetime rating is still Mixed. Stability is the catch in reviews written after the expansion launched. Crash reports (D3D errors, "unhandled exception" on launch) made up 28% of the negative reviews (27 of 95), on PCs that had run the game fine before.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Weighty, physical combat built around climbing big monstersHigh
Combat comes up about as often as any topic in the reviews, and it carries much of the praise. Players describe climbing a cyclops to hit its eye, pulling feathers off a griffin, hanging off a griffin's wing mid-air, and pawns catching them when they fall. "Combat is heavy and satisfying like anything else," one player wrote, and another summed up the appeal as "It's simple. I see an enemy. I grab them. I throw them off a cliff. I progress." Vocations are a large part of this: players single out the Mystic Spearhand, Magick Archer, Sorcerer and Thief as feeling distinct, and some start a second run to try a new vocation. Players name the September 2026 update's two extra skill slots (six in total) as making every class better. Some players call the combat clunky or complain of being staggered and grabbed constantly as a melee class, and some veterans add that normal fights become trivial once you outlevel the map.
Exploration and a real sense of adventureHigh
Players praise unscripted encounters on the road (two armoured ogres, then a rock golem straight after) and the need to camp and plan routes. "Feels like being on an actual adventure," one wrote; another said "while it was a frustration without fast travel it made every journey a planned trip." Some critics find the map is mostly mountain paths and canyons funnelling you between points, with chests full of low-value loot; one called it "a bunch of closed off areas pretending to be an open world."
Pawns as a party you build and shareHigh
Players call the pawn system unique. They enjoy designing a main pawn, hiring other players' pawns for free, and the way pawns pass on what they learned about quests and treasure in someone else's world. Some find them oddly lovable: "the pawns are strangely endearing like little siblings so desperate for your approval." The complaints are about behaviour: pawns repeat the same lines until they grate, get stuck on ledges, and sometimes ignore a fight. A few reviews written after the expansion launched say pawn pathing got worse ("Pawns are getting stuck on ledges, cant climb ladders, drowning themselves").
The Dark Arisen expansion and the updates that came with itMedium
Reviews from October 2026 often treat the expansion as the moment the game became what it should have been. Players describe a large new region rather than a single dungeon ("It is basically like DD1's DLC, but instead of a mega dungeon you have a large region to explore"), relics with random affixes that make loot hunting worthwhile, tougher enemies, a hard mode, and an endgame loop the base game lacked. Returning players say they came back for it and found the base game running better as well. Some advise finishing the main campaign before entering the new area. A few players call it the same loop as the base game, others say the new area cut their frame rate, and launch buyers object to its price (see frustrations).
Visuals and world designMedium
Players often call the game beautiful: the scenery, the monster designs, the lighting at night and the cities. Negative reviews bring up the graphics too, some praising the looks before listing their problems and a few calling them dated.
Character creationLow
The character and pawn creator is a smaller but steady source of praise, with players spending hours on their Arisen and main pawn. The complaint attached to it is that fixing a character you end up disliking can mean restarting.
Where players are split
Is it a worthy sequel to Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen?High
Comparisons with the first game come up often, and they split both ways. Disappointed fans list what they feel was lost: "Less vocations, less skills, reduced skill layouts, less equipment variety," fewer hybrid vocations, a story that retells the first game's, and no equivalent of Bitterblack Isle at launch. Others argue the sequel improves on the original's combat, exploration and pawns, and that DD1 itself only became beloved after its own Dark Arisen release; one wrote that "DD2 takes a lot longer to fall in love with." Some players new to the series say they did not miss what veterans describe and enjoyed the game on its own terms. Negative reviews from players with long playtimes raise the first game far more often than those from players who stopped early. The September 2026 skill slots and the expansion answered part of this complaint, and several DD1 fans changed their reviews to positive.
Limited fast travel and long walksMedium
Some players like that ferrystones and portcrystals are scarce and oxcarts limited, because it makes trips eventful. Others call it "running from one point to another" and say escort and delivery quests turn the map into a commute. Reviewers say the 2026 updates added an eternal ferrystone and more portcrystals; some welcomed it ("the infinite ferrystone+plentiful portstones fixes a lot of the travel slog"), while a few purists felt it "shows a complete lack of faith in their own gameplay loop and systems."
Difficulty and challengeLow
Before the hard mode arrived, a recurring veteran complaint was that the game becomes far too easy once you level up. Newer or melee players report the opposite problem: long stagger and grab animations that leave them stun-locked by small enemies. Players welcomed the hard mode added alongside the expansion, especially paired with a fresh save.
Microtransactions and the launch reputationLow
The launch-week anger over paid ferrystones, portcrystals and wakestones still appears, mainly in edited 2024 reviews ("single player games should never have microtransactions"). Other players called them irrelevant even then. Some later reviews say most were removed in 2026, while others say convenience items are still on sale. In reviews written in 2026 the topic often comes up as an explanation of why the Steam rating is lower than the game deserves.
What frustrates players
PC performance, especially in citiesHigh
For two years performance was a frequent reason for a thumbs down. The complaint was CPU-bound frame drops in cities and busy areas even on high-end hardware: "40 fps on a 4070 in 1080p. Wait for fixes." Players also report shader stutter, upscaler artifacts and frame generation input lag. Reviews written after the September 2026 update report large gains once Denuvo was removed ("Before removal FPS in Vernmund: 30-40 FPS After removal FPS in Vernmund: 100-110 FPS"), and returning launch buyers describe the game as smooth. Some players still get poor frame rates after the updates, and a few say the expansion's new area halved theirs.
A thin, rushed story and flat writingHigh
The story is criticized in negative and positive reviews alike. Players describe an intriguing opening that fizzles ("The story opens up with an interesting premise but then goes absolutely nowhere"), major characters who vanish, an abrupt ending, and stilted dialogue. Some positive reviews advise playing for the combat and exploration rather than the plot. A vocal minority defends it, pointing to the hidden true ending and the "unmoored world" as a meta-narrative about free will, and a few say it only clicked after a video essay explained it. Story complaints come mostly from players who reached the later acts; negative reviews from players who stopped within the first hours raise it far less often.
The same few enemies everywhereMedium
Goblins, saurians, harpies, wolves and bandits fill the roads, and the big monsters (cyclops, ogres, griffins, drakes) repeat with palette-swapped variants, so players say the fights wear thin. One player summed it up as "the combat is fun you're going to fight the same six enemies over and over". This complaint grows with playtime and comes mostly from long-playtime players; several say mods or the expansion's new enemies fixed it for them.
Crashes, and new instability after the 2026 updatesMedium
Crashes appear throughout the reviews: in the character creator, during cutscenes, when changing vocation in the capital, or on launch. The pattern changed after the late 2026 updates. Some players who had crashed before say the September update fixed it, while others who had played without trouble started crashing after it, with D3D DEVICE_REMOVED errors, "unhandled exception" messages and black screens with HDR on. After the expansion launched, crash and launch failures were behind 28% of negative reviews (27 of 95), well above the 9 to 14% share in earlier periods. "Can't play since the dlc launched, crashes every 30 mins," one wrote after trying every listed fix; another found "The performance is fixed but now this error pops up every hour and the game crashes." Workarounds players share include lowering texture quality and installing REFramework.
Vague quests and a punishing save systemMedium
Quest complaints come mostly from players past the first ten hours: quests with no markers, time limits that silently fail them, and stories missed by progressing in the wrong order. "This game is unplayable without constantly having to lookup quest guides on youtube or google," one wrote. Quest-breaking bugs add to it. Until 2026 the save system made these mistakes permanent: one save slot, autosaves that overwrite, and an inn-save option that loses hours if misclicked ("Nothing like losing 20 hours to a missclick on the main menu"). Several reviews also mention the save-ruining Dragonsplague disease. Later reviews note that multiple save slots arrived in 2026, which answered the most serious part of this.
Keyboard and mouse controls and clunky menusLow
Players who quit early are the most likely to blame the PC controls: awkward default keybinds, keys that cannot be rebound, negative mouse acceleration ("Remove the negative mouse acceleration."), and menus that need extra steps to load or quit. Several say the game is much better on a controller. A handful also report motion sickness from the narrow field of view and motion blur.
Expansion pricing for launch buyersLow
A small group of launch buyers, some of whom paid for the deluxe edition, object that new players can buy the base game and expansion together for less than the base game first cost, while they pay full price for the expansion: "Why should I be punished for purchasing the game on release." Others mention waiting for a sale before buying the game at all.
DRMLow
Before September 2026, players blamed Denuvo for part of the performance problems, and some say they waited for its removal before buying. Reviewers say it was replaced by Enigma, and a few report Enigma blocking launches or crashing the game when mods are installed.
3. The player conversation
The conversation is long-running and heavily edited. Plenty of reviews carry dated updates written on top of a launch review, and players who say they changed their review in 2026 mostly moved it from negative to positive after coming back for the updates and the expansion. Reviews first written in March and April 2024 were 71% positive; those written from January 2025 to early June 2026 dipped to 65%, a period when some reviews said the game had been left unfixed. The expansion announcement in June 2026 brought a wave of hopeful reviews (79% positive from then until late August), and the September update and the October expansion launch pushed newly written reviews to 84% positive.
Negative reviews from players who stopped within a few hours bring up crashes and the PC controls more often than others do, while performance complaints come from short and long playtimes alike. Negative reviewers with dozens of hours are far more likely to talk about the story, quest design, enemy variety, the lack of endgame and comparisons with the first game. Positive reviews praise the combat, exploration and pawns, and some advise patience because the game takes time to click. Positive reviews also criticize the story, and some name the thin enemy variety. After the expansion, stability is the new point of contention: some players praise smooth performance while others report crashes that began with the update.
4. What the developers could do
- Fix the crashes introduced by the late 2026 updates. After the expansion launched, crashes, D3D device-removed errors and "unhandled exception" launch failures were behind 28% of new negative reviews, often from players whose game had run fine before.
- Keep improving CPU performance in cities and the new expansion area. Players writing since September confirm the gains, but others still report low frame rates, and a few say the expansion region halved theirs.
- Add more enemy types to the base game's regions. Long-playtime players who lost interest point to the same goblins, saurians and handful of large monsters repeating everywhere.
- Make quests easier to follow and harder to fail by accident. Players report needing guides to finish side quests, quests failing silently on timers, and quest-breaking bugs.
- Rework keyboard and mouse support. Players who quit early cite negative mouse acceleration, fixed keybinds and awkward menus, and several say the game only feels right on a controller.
- Fix pawn pathing and vary pawn chatter. Pawns getting stuck, drowning or skipping fights, and repeating the same lines, undercut a system players praise.
- Offer launch buyers a fairer route to the expansion. Early buyers who paid more for the base game than new players pay for the full bundle say they feel punished for supporting the game at release.
